DivinityMagazine

Faculty & Staff Notes

Jeremy Begbie spoke in April on “The Sound of Hope: How Music Can Help Us Face the Future” and “Re-Timed by God: What Musical Rhythm Can Tell Us about Worship” at Christ Church in Greenwich, Conn. The lectures were delivered as part of Christ Church’s series “Conversations on Courage and Faith.” In the summer, he preached at the chapels of St. John’s College and Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (U.K.), and addressed the Oxford University Graduate Christian Union on the topic “The Music of God and the God of Music.” During Holy Week Begbie led an artistic and academic collaboration between scholars and performers from Duke University and Cambridge as part of the Easter at King’s Festival of Music and Services. He gave a Maundy Thursday performance in King’s Chapel of Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen for two pianos with concert pianist Cordelia Williams. Begbie also composed a musical setting of a poem by Irish poet Micheal O’Siadhail commissioned for the occasion.

Charles Campbell published Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly (Baylor University Press), co-authored with Johan Cilliers of Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa; lectured and preached in Berlin, Germany, at an event sponsored by the Zentrum fuer evangelische Predigtkultur; attended the biennial meeting of Societas Homiletica, in Wittenberg, Germany; and lectured at the annual clergy retreat for the Diocese of Upper South Carolina, Episcopal Church (USA).

Kenneth Carder delivered the keynote address for the 20th anniversary celebration of Narrow Ridge Earth Literacy Center at St. Paul United Methodist Church in Fountain City, Tenn. He also moderated a panel discussion, “Multi-faith Organizing for Children: How to Build Inclusive and Powerful Coalitions,” at the Children’s Defense Fund National Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio, on July 23; and he delivered the Fall Convocation Lecture at Garrett Evangelical Seminary on Sept. 12. His preaching engagements included Salem UMC on May 20 (where he participated in the confirmation of his granddaughter); Long’s Chapel UMC in Waynesville, N.C., on June 6; and Roan Mountain UMC in Roan Mountain, Tenn., on Aug. 12.

Stephen Chapman published “Food, Famine, and the Nations: A Canonical Approach to Genesis” in Genesis and Christian Theology , edited by Nathan MacDonald, Mark W. Elliott, and Grant Macaskill (Eerdmans), and “Second Temple Jewish Hermeneutics: How Canon Is Not an Anachronism” in Invention, Rewriting, Usurpation: Discursive Fights over Religious Traditions in Antiquity , edited by Joerg. Ulrich, Anders-Christian Jacobsen, and David Brakke (Peter Lang). He presented “Perpetual War: The Case of Amalek” at a May 29–31 conference on “The Bible and Spirituality” jointly sponsored by the University of Gloucestershire and the British Bible Society. In June he taught a session on “Covenant” for the Duke Youth Academy. This fall he serves as director of Duke’s Graduate Program in Religion.

Mark Chaves gave an invited lecture, “Continuity and Change in American Religion,” at Glencoe (Ill.) Union Church on April 12. He also gave the keynote address, “Continuity and Change in American Religion,” at the Eighth Annual Student-Run Ministry Conference, University of Chicago Divinity School, on April 13.

Ellen Davis was in South Sudan June 2–14 teaching on “Isaiah and the Prophetic Ministry of Peacekeeping” and “The Wisdom of the Village: Reading the Book of Proverbs in the Sudanese Church” for United Methodist clergy and for seminary students and other lay and ordained leaders of the Episcopal Church of Sudan. In May she presented a paper at a University of Gloucester (U.K.) conference on “The Bible and Spirituality.” In consultation with a small international group of Anglican scholars and church leaders, she also completed a report on how Anglicans throughout the world read Scripture and use it for moral discernment.

Maria Doerfler received the North American Patristics Society’s Best First Article Prize for her article “The Infant, the Monk and the Martyr: The Death of Children in Eastern Patristic Thought” in the December 2011 issue of Le Museon . Her paper “A Gaul in the Desert: Egyptian Texts and Readers in the Late Ancient Ascetic Imagination” received the Best Graduate Student Paper award at the annual North American Patristic Society meeting in May. In July she gave an invited public lecture at Holy Cross Greek Theological Seminary’s Pappas Patristics Summer Institute in Brookline, Mass., on early developments in Syriac Christianity. She also presented “Judging the World: Monastic Communities and the Formation of Late Ancient Judicial Discourse” at the “Heaven and Earth: Law, Ideology, and the Social Order in Late Antiquity” international roundtable at the University of Manchester (U.K.) in September.